Guest speaker: A proactive approach: Weaving wellbeing into classroom practice with Circles for Learning
At a glance
Guest speaker
Alison Waterhouse
Webinar duration
2 hours
Suitable for
Thrive Licensed Practitioners
CPD
Worth 5 CPD points
Price per place
£75 excl. VAT
Course Outcomes
During Alison's 2-hour session, you'll explore:
- How parent and young child observations can stimulate conversations, thinking and exploration around the 5 key areas that underpin positive mental health and wellbeing.
- How observing a young child and their parent can enable children to share how they feel, see themselves and experience the world - and how this information can support their learning and social and emotional development in the classroom, enabling them to feel seen, thought about and understood by their teacher.
- Practical methods for embedding wellbeing into daily classroom practice through structured activities and reflective discussions inspired by the Circles for Learning model.
- A range of activities and resources to use in the classroom to promote and develop the 5 key areas: emotional literacy, self-awareness, relationships, neuroscience and learning.
- The importance of observation and reflection in understanding and meeting the learning and emotional needs of children and young people in their class.
Who is it for?
This session is ideal for Thrive Licensed Practitioners in the following roles:
- Class Teachers, teaching assistants and PSHE leads (KS1-KS3)
- Teachers and teaching assistants in special schools including SEMH and ASD schools
- Heads, SLT and Wellbeing Leads looking to embed preventative approaches to emotional wellbeing into school practice
Introducing guest speaker: Alison Waterhouse
Alison has had an exciting and varied career in Education over the past 30 years. She has worked as a class teacher, SENCo, Head of Inclusion, Head Teacher in a therapeutic special school and in an alternative progressive school, Mental Health and Wellbeing Consultant and Educational Psychotherapist. Alison was the founding head of a therapeutic special school in Kent and whilst working in the role trained at the Portman and Tavistock and then Caspari as an Educational Psychotherapist.
Alison decided to return to mainstream school where she worked as a Teacher in Charge of the Social and Emotional Needs of the Whole School Community (Best title ever!) Following this Alison became an Independent Consultant for SEN and Wellbeing; working for Young Minds; The Anna Freud Foundation and as an Advisor for Optimus Education advising schools on how to achieve their new Wellbeing Award.
Alison has been developing the Circles for Learning Project over the past 10 years. Through her work and research she identified 5 key areas that build positive foundations for mental health and wellbeing and has used the Circles for Learning work to build and develop these key areas in schools. Alison has had 9 books published by Routledge, with 5 forming the Mental Health and Wellbeing Teachers Toolkit. Books full of exciting lessons and activities for teachers to develop work around emotional literacy, self-awareness, relationships, the brain and skills for learning all of which underpin positive emotional wellbeing.
What you'll learn
This session explores how monthly classroom visits from a parent and young child, combined with follow-up teaching, can help embed emotional wellbeing into everyday classroom practice.
You’ll discover how integrating the Thrive Approach with Circles for Learning can support schools to develop a whole-child, relational and emotionally intelligent ethos. Both approaches are based on attachment theory, neuroscience and the importance of early relationships and offer distinct yet complimentary methods for meeting the emotional and developmental needs of all children.
The session will demonstrate how this work enhances teachers’ understanding of the five key areas that support mental health and emotional wellbeing. It will also show how regular observation and reflection help teacher better respond to the academic and emotional needs of their pupils.
By combining Thrive and Circles of Learning, schools can adopt a proactive, relational and therapeutically informed whole-school approach where children thrive socially, emotionally and academically.
Course structure
2-hour webinar.
Dates and times
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